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SEATTLE, Feb. 1, 2008 -- A medical team with the Swedish Neuroscience Institute (SNI) comprised of various physician specialists, nurses and other clinicians -- all led by neurosurgeon and SNI Executive Director Marc Mayberg, M.D. -- donated their time and expertise to help provide 18-year-old Peruvian teen Cristian Cruz Choccata access to a high-tech, minimally invasive brain surgery that dramatically improved his vision, ultimately saved his life and which will now allow him to return home in a matter of weeks.

Cristian ultimately found his way to Swedish through Spokane, Wash.-based Healing the Children (HTC). HTC chapters across the country bring children to cities in their area, find medical professionals who will donate their services, and assign each child to a volunteer host family who will provide room, board and care for the duration of the child’s stay in the United States. Physicians from many surgical specialties, pediatricians, dentists, nurses, hospitals, laboratories, airline personnel, teachers, translators, social workers, and many other professionals generously give their time and expertise to HTC.

Over the years, Swedish and many of its affiliated physicians and clinicians have donated their time and expertise to help numerous kids who have come here via HTC.

In a couple of weeks, Cristian will return to the Cherry Hill Campus -- home base for SNI -- where he will receive another high-tech procedure at the Seattle CyberKnife Center™ at Swedish so that any remnants of his benign pituitary tumor can be painlessly treated to help ensure that he will not require future treatment.

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Media Coverage

To learn more about Cristian's story and the high-tech, minimally invasive brain surgery he received at Swedish/Cherry Hill, click here to read the transcript from and watch video of a related story that KOMO Television (channel 4; ABC) aired on Feb. 1.

To read the transcript from and watch video of a related story that KOMO Television (channel 4; ABC) aired on Jan. 30, click here.

And to read a related column published in the Jan. 16 issue of The (Everett) Herald, click here.